Judicial Post Mortem: Zygier Tranquilized Before Death, Body Bruised

The Israeli judge appointed to investigate the death of Prisoner X (aka Ben Zygier) took two years to do so. She released her report only six weeks before Australian TV broke the story open by identifying Zygier as the victim. Yesterday, a mere eight pages of the report were released (Hebrew) to the public. Those eight pages, which we can assume are the least damaging to the State and the most emphatic in supporting its claim that he committed suicide, provide more than enough evidence to cast serious doubt on the narrative offered by the government.

While the judge finds that Zygier killed himself by attaching a sheet to a bar of his bathroom window, she also notes that trace amounts of a tranquilizer were found in his blood (keep in mind that he would not have been tested until hours after his death, since the security services tramped through the crime scene without allowing any other police or prison personnel to enter) along with bruises on his body. She finds that neither the tranquilizers nor bruises contributed to his death. What she really means is that they didn’t cause his death, which is of course the truth. But were they part of a larger plan to kill him? We must remember that Mahmoud al-Mabouh was murdered in a very similar fashion. He was administered a tranquilizer then smothered with a pillow. If there was a murderer, he couldn’t very well use the same method since smothering would be too suspicious. Suicide would be far more persuasive.

MK Uri Ariel disbelieves official account of Zygier suicide

The judge concedes the possibility of foul play:

“Though the deceased was found hanged in the bathroom of the cell, this does not negate the theoretical possibility of active intervention on the part of another person who intentionally caused his death in this way.”

I also note that MK Uri Ariel, one of the most extreme right-wing members of Knesset, and who has no love lost with the security services, reported yesterday that he didn’t believe the prisoner committed suicide.

The most disturbing aspect of these findings (or tranquilizer traces and bruising) is there is no explanation for how they occurred. The judge does not explain how Zygier got a tranquilizer. Was he prescribed one? By whom? If he was not prescribed one, how did it enter his body? The judge says she cannot determine whether the bruises on his body were caused before or after death. This is but one important question to answer. What caused the bruises? An instrument? Another person? The movement of the body during the act of suicide? A forensic pathologist who wants to do so can answer many of these questions. Either these questions are answered in the 18 pages the judge maintained under gag or they aren’t answered at all.

The judge writes in her report that no one could’ve entered Zygier’s cell to kill him because there were no entrances not covered by surveillance. But she neglects to note that it was precisely the negligent surveillance of the cell to begin with that allowed the suicide. So are we to believe the prison service was negligent enough to allow him to kill himself but not negligent enough to miss someone entering the cell to kill him? Further, the prisoner service says it was not monitoring the cell, nor was it suicide proof. Who do you believe?

I’ve noted Israeli reports based on prison service eyewitnesses who noted that unnamed plainclothes security agents swarmed Zygier’s cell after his death. They were not doing a criminal investigation nor treating it as a crime scene. But there were reams of documents they signed as they left the cell indicating they may be coordinating their stories for the investigations to come. The judge’s finding do nothing to explain why this bizarre behavior.

Reports note that the State urged the judge to close her file without finding any criminal finding or negligence on any official party. Zygier’s family objected and complained that doing so would preclude assigning blame to any official party. The judge didn’t oblige the State and sent her findings to the attorney general to determine whether a case for negligence could be made against the guards. My guess is that the judge knew that if she acceded to the government, when this was exposed publicly she’d be a laughingstock. Blaming the prison service would be a classic stratagem for blaming low-man on the totem pole so you don’t have to place blame at the feet of the powerful men who really brought about his death: the directors of the Shabak and Mossad themselves.

This partial release of the judicial inquiry is wholly unsatisfactory and raises more questions than it answers. In fact, the 20 pages that remain sealed allow the public to harbor the impression there are further damaging facts and evidence that the State is concealing. If Israel doesn’t want the world to believe they’re covering up they must release this report in full.

A Haaretz headline yesterday asked why Zygier hanged himself. If he did, that’s not hard to fathom at all. Put yourself in his shoes. You are a young man from a sheltered Jewish suburban home in Melbourne. Your father is a major leader of the national Jewish community. You are seeking to make a mark for yourself so you can measure up. But you don’t feel you quite fit in. You’re a bit of a shlep, a bit of a wannabe rather than the real deal.

So you follow the vision of your Jewish youth embodied by HaShomer HaTzair and you make aliyah. You’re recruited to the Mossad possibly largely because of the value you offer in terms of being a dual national and your ability to obtain multiple fake passports for intelligence operations in Arab countries. While in the Mossad you’re still trying to prove to people how important you are and you blurt out to them that you’re a Mossad agent.

All of this doesn’t signal a person who’s cast from the same mold as legendary Mossad agents like Eli Cohen. Zygier still has a need to prove himself and violates the basic rules of spookdom of not blowing your cover.

On a related subject, I find it laughable that the official Australian Jewish community has emphatically denied that its Israel programs serve as a recruitment tool for the Mossad. This denial flies in the face of the fact that the Italian front company was established, as I wrote, by three Australian-Israelis recruited precisely because they were both ardent Zionists and had access to western passports needed for covert operations. Living in denial is one thing, but when you try to persuade others that your denial is an accurate representation of reality, that’s where I part company.

During his spy service, Zygier plays a key role in setting up a Mossad front company in Milan which trades in electronic and computer gear to Iran (Italian security services where are you as the Mossad is violating western sanctions against Iran?). He and his other two Australian-Israeli agents make multiple trips to Iran, Syria and Lebanon for these trade missions. They possibly serve other roles in assisting Mossad’s efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.

Further, Zygier plays a key role in the agency’s secret operation to secure fraudulent western passports for agents who assassinate Mahmoud al-Mabouh. Israel, in fact, arrested him on the same day (February 24 2010) that the Dubai police revealed Israeli agents used such passports to enter and exit its country. It appears likely that the Australian intelligence services may’ve gotten Zygier to confess his role in the passports operation. Australia may, in turn, have passed this information on to the Dubai authorities.

When Mossad discovered Dubai was about to announce the identity of the 27 agents (or at least the forged passports they used) it would’ve realized they’d been compromised from the inside. It wouldn’t have taken long for suspicions to fall on Zygier, since Jason Koutsoukis had already pointed a finger in his direction with a story he published about the Iran front-company in the same period.

Once Zygier is arrested and in Ayalon prison, Shabak interrogators begin squeezing him. They want to know not only what he told the Australians, but they want him to go quietly so as not to cause embarrassment to the State and particularly the Mossad. The Shabak is not known for subtlety. They have only one mode: bullying. So they told him if he didn’t accept a plea deal and admit guilt he’d go away for life, never see his family again. They told him his name would be synonymous with treason both in Israel and Australia. He would have no life left worth living.

Then they offered him the plea deal. According to Yediot Achronot, it was 10-20 years in prison. When Zygier’s wife sent Avigdor Feldman to consult with him about whether to accept the plea deal, Feldman undoubtedly told him that security detainees who go to trial never get off. There is no such thing as acquittal or innocence. The interrogators had already promised him a sentence of life in prison if he rejected the plea deal. So he has three choices: go to trial and face life in prison; accept a plea and spend the best years of your life (including the growing up of your two daughters, one of whom is born four days before your death) in solitary confinement before you’re released; or death.

Are you surprised he would choose death? Keep in mind this is not an Israeli or Palestinian in whom a certain grit and toughness is instilled from youth. This is a sheltered kid from the ‘burbs. He’s not used to the grilling, the shouting, the abuse, the browbeating meted out by the Shabak. He’s not used to the isolation of prison. Hell, he’s not even used to prison itself.

My question is why the authorities wouldn’t have anticipated a suicide attempt. Of course, unless they figured that a dead prisoner would be better than a live one; and did nothing to hinder his attempt.

I reported here a few days ago that Security Minister Aharonovich made the laughable claim that Zygier had been afforded the finest mental health treatment the Prison Service budget could buy. Now, the Prison Service tells us the truth–that they could offer him none of these services because there was a strict veil of secrecy over the prisoner. How could a social worker or psychologist have treated a man who didn’t exist? How could the prisoner have shared any of his case with them? I don’t mind that Israeli leaders lie. It’s the absolute shallowness and insult of their lies that disturbs me.

Chicago NPR station WBEZ interviewed me for its Worldview program on the Zygier case. Listen to the audio here.

RE: “My question is why the authorities wouldn’t have anticipated a suicide attempt. . . I reported here a few days ago that Security Minister Aharonovich made the laughable claim that Zygier had been afforded the finest mental health treatment the Prison Service budget could buy. Now, the Prison Service tells us the truth–that they could offer him none of these services because there was a strict veil of secrecy over the prisoner.” ~ R.S.

MY COMMENT: Even if Zygier technically committed suicide, I still consider him to have been extra-judicially executed by the Mossad and Israel due to the extremely abusive conditions under which he was kept.

[EXCERPTS] For most of the 20th century, prisoners’ stays in solitary confinement were relatively short. “People would get thrown in ‘the hole’ for a couple days at a time, maybe a couple weeks at a time,” says Craig Haney, PhD, a social psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose research has explored the psychological effects of incarceration. . .. . . As solitary confinement has become more common, so have questions about its psychological impacts. Chief among those questions: What really happens to people deprived of social contact for months or years on end?
Two types of solitary confinement are commonly in use today. The first, known as disciplinary segregation, is leveled as punishment when inmates break the rules. Steal a cellmate’s radio, for instance, and you might be in solitary for a week or two. During disciplinary segregation, an inmate is separated from other inmates for a specified period of time.The second type of confinement is known as administrative segregation, which is used when prisoners are deemed a risk to the safety of other inmates or prison staff. Prisoners in administrative segregation are placed into isolation units for months or years. Corrections officials first turned to this strategy in response to growing gang violence inside prisons, Dvoskin says. Though critics contend that administrative segregation has never been proven to make prisons safer, use of this type of confinement has continued to rise. That’s worrisome to most psychologists who study the issue. Deprived of normal human interaction, many segregated prisoners reportedly suffer from mental health problems including anxiety, panic, insomnia, paranoia, aggression and depression, Haney says (Crime and Delinquency, 2003). . .

[EXCERPTS] “It’s a standard psychiatric concept, if you put people in isolation, they will go insane…. It’s a big problem in the
California system, putting large numbers in the SHUs [Secured Housing Units]… Most people in isolation will fall apart.” — Sandra Schank, staff psychiatrist, Mule Creek State Prison, California. [1]Solitary confinement is the practice of isolating a prisoner in a closed cell for 23 to 24 hours a day—often for weeks or months, and sometimes for years or decades at a time. While precise data on nationwide utilization of the practice is elusive, we know that some 20,000 inmates are in solitary confinement in America‘s supermax prisons, while tens of thousands more are held in isolation in other prisons and jails. [2]
● Solitary Confinement and Mental Health</b“We make loners here, not better people.” — Prison Psychologist [3]Since the 1970s, research has been amassed indicating that solitary confinement does alter neural and therefore psychological states.
One study examining the development of psychopathologies found that those in solitary developed pathologies at higher rates than those in the general population (28% vs. 15%). [4]
Another study of 20 prisoners who volunteered for a week of solitary confinement found that the prisoners exhibited decreased EEG activity, indicative of increased theta activity, which is related to stress, tension, and anxiety. [5]Prisoners in solitary confinement have been found to engage in self-mutilation at rates higher than the general population. [6] . . .
● Suicide in SolitaryIn 2005, forty-four prisoners in the California prison system committed suicide; 70% of whom were in solitary confinement. [9]
This has been a consistent trend. A national study of 401 jail suicides in 1986 found that two out of three were among those held in a control unit. [10]
A 2007 study examining attempted suicide in the prison system identified solitary confinement as a major factor in suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Among the 24 individuals who attempted suicide: “I started hearing voices and losing control of my own thoughts…I really started noticing more when I started being in the hole…It just started getting worse for me.” —Participant 22 [11] . . .

What makes the security camera shots released last night by the Dubai police interesting is the “professionalism” exhibited by the suspected assassins of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. On the basis of the video clips and the information provided by Dubai police officers investigating the murder, the assassination squad involved 10 men carrying British, French, German and Irish passports.

Throughout the operation, none of the suspects made a direct call to any another. However, Dubai police traced a high volume of calls and text messages between three phones carried by the assassins and four numbers in Austria where a command centre had apparently been established.

The Milan office building exudes elegance with its stucco facade, brass name plate, concierge service and expensive wooden furniture inside. There’s nothing to suggest that the firm based here, which specializes in the sale of satellite communications technology, is a front for the Israel foreign intelligence service Mossad.

But the Milan company is reported to have hired Israeli agents who needed legends for their operations in enemy territory. One of them was Ben Zygier … The company is reported to have vouched as Zygier’s employer when he applied for a work visa at the Italian consulate in Melbourne in 2005.

The agent was arrested in February 2010, shortly after the Mossad had murdered the weapons dealer of Hamas in Dubai. Now there’s speculation that Zygier was involved in that killing, and that he may have divulged secrets. Or did he have something to do with the killings of Iranian scientists or software attacks against Iran’s nuclear program?

There are no answers, but Zygier and two other Australian Jews , Paul Y. and David Z. who also worked for the Milan firm, were reported to have been successful agents. “The nature of their business gave them access to military and secret installations.”

According to the sources, the GID believes that the attack came in response to the killing of Iranian scientist Prof. Massoud Ali Muhammadi in Teheran last week [January 12, 2010]. Ali Muhammadi was killed by a remote-controlled bomb on a motorcycle.

In June, 2009 Hizbullah had completed plans for 3rd attack to avenge Mughniyeh. Hizbullah was involved in the January bombing attack on the convoy of Israel’s ambassador to Jordan, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi told a top UN official, according to an American diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks.

The attack which took place not far from the Allenby Bridge, which Israeli intelligence at the time assessed was likely the handiwork of Hizbullah which was seeking to avenge the 2008 assassination of its military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus.

I’m no forensic pathologist, but I’d guess that a lot of tranquilizer would be needed to incapacitate a 34 year old male, and that with the onset of death, the body would stop breaking down the chemicals of the tranquilizer, leaving behind more than a ‘trace’.

It depends on the tranquilizer and how long after the drug was administered before his blood was tested. We know it had to have been many hours. IF they didn’t want to find any traces the test could’ve been administered when there would be little left in his system.

Israeli’s secret services were able to kill the guy prior to getting him into the prison.
The notion they exposed him to 3 judges, 3 lawyers, notified his family in Australia, His family in Israel, 4 attorney’s, another 3 judges this time in the supreme court, Australian foreign affairs department, Australian secret service and then killed him makes no sense.
Could have killed him before exposing him to anyone, could have notified his family he died in a car accident, security service was able to do all that after extracting all info he had, and he would have been as dead.
The notion that Israel’s security services killed him simply makes no sense.

A dead body, through dissolution and putrefaction will effect chemical changes to any organic chemical in it at time of death. Consider also the so-called tranquilizer said found on autopsy could have been something (my speculation) as benign as valium or its congeners. As an aside, it is very hard to commit suicide with this class of tranquilizers – it’s been famously tried by a former high ranking member of the U.S government administration a couple of decades ago though in high enough doses can render one very relaxed.

Robert
Quiet correct.
The thory that some want to propagate is that Israel tranquilizer him for nefarious reasons. Like they gave him tranquilizers so they could hang him and stage a suicide. Although that logic in this situation is absurd, but when chasing wind mills people irrationally grab at straws.

The body produces enzymes which can break complex hydrocarbons down, and these don’t actually stop working when the body person expires. This is one of the reasons why there’s a sequence of changes in the body after death.

Furthermore, a suspended hanging, without a sudden hangman’s drop to break the neck, is by no means an instant execution, and can take half an hour, during which the metabolism will be neutralizing the drug, which might have been administered some little while before the hanging.

Joel, you are inteed no forensic pathologist, or based on the totality of your comments here, an expert of any kind. As for drugs that metabolize quickly I suggest you look into the curious case of the mahmoud al Mabhouh, murdered by israeli mafioso hit men in Dubai. He was apparently first “tranquilized” or rather, paralysed with an agent succynylcholine, a powerful muscle relaxant that leaves very little mark and quickly disappears. It can be used to mimic a heart attack and one has to know what to look for to find it and the Dubai police did. There are many similar “tranquilizers”. Please look at the accounts of just how long it took to “discover’ the ‘suicide” (one hour), for police to arrive and for any investigation to start. By the time a pathologist (by no means an honest one necessarily) was given a chance to examine the body, hours and hours have passed and possibly longer. I doubt of course, any account will convince you of the futility of your apologetics, but you might learn something along the way, which is always good.

Some are both.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temazepam
My endodontist, who also (fortunately?) has a Phd in Pharmacology, offered a positively Socratean draught of this in his waiting room, to not just dope me into submission but also relax my muscles so he could prise my inflamed jaw open.
If they offer you a general anesthetic instead of this, for God’s sake say “yes, please”.

I remember drinking the draught in the waiting room, and then I was in the chair, being worked on. Moving from A to B is a complete blank.
If he’d been minded to hang me rather than drill for oil, I wouldn’t have been capable of much resistance.

Dana, what is it that i believe exactly ? That he was brought in-front of a 3 judges ? that he had legal representation and his lawyers met with him ? that a proper notification was given to the Australian ?
Both Mr. Feldman and the Australians admitted to the fact that Mr. Feldman met with him and that proper notification was provided.

joel, Yanshuf I was bringing the “muscle relaxant” only as one example of a fast acting drug. There are no doubt others that belong to the ‘tranquilizer” family. Or the ‘anti-depressant” family.

Elad R, I have no idea what you believe exactly. I merely pointed to the totally obvious – you have to take everything that comes from any paper in israel with a boulder of salt. And right now, they are working very very hard to try and convince the sheeple that their judiciary system is more than kangaroo court when it comes to their “security prisoners (if in doubt, you can always ask some palestinians about the israeli justice system). As an exercise, why don’t you try to read between the lines – the spaces really tell the tale of judiciary rubber-stamping.

Well, I’d love to continue wrestle with you guys, but it’s a nice day outside and I gotta go chase me some squirrels off the porch…

Of course — a sedated person cannot hang themselves. So the sedative was inserted directly afterwards OR, I’m guessing, this man did not hang himself. History is clear that Israel has not special regard for allies, every state is fair game for spying and illegal assassinations. Israel’s population is roughly the equivalent of the Bronx and Brooklyn combined: How can this little state (two boroughs!) afford worldwide operatives and endless clandestine schemes? Who pays for all this? Israeli citizens? I doubt it.

8 years ago I was married to a woman who worked full time as a teacher in a Israeli public high school.
Her net salary was approximately $ 1,000 a month. Let’s say her gross was 2,000 a month.
Where in the US would a full time HS teacher in a public scoop earn a gross salary of $24 thousand a year.

Note that incremental tax brackets kick in at a much lower amount of gross income than in the US.
A family of 4 earning approximately 54 thousand in the United States pays no US federal income tax.
The same family of 4 in Israel is paying a lot of taxes. I don’t have current tax tables handy.

The duty on the importation of cars in Israel is 95% plus VAT. Rule of thumb is that the same cars double of what it costs in the US.

Gas prices change but 8 years ago it was 4 times the price of gas on Long Island,NY.

Israeli citizens amd corporations have more patents filed in the United States Patents Office then the combined number of patents filed from the Europan union combined. This was of 4 years ago and it would be difficult to find the source now..

Israel has more attorneys per capita then any other country in the world. Note this makes conducting buissnees a pain in the kneck there.

Israelis write more books and publish/ sell more books than any other country in the world.

Yes Israel gets more military assistance from the US than any other country in the world. Next is Egypt in terms of military assistance.
American military aid requires that all of the money except for I believe 300 million dollars be spent in America. So that’s over 2 billion dollars a year spent in America for equipment , support etc.

Because of this requirement Israel has gone into partnership with a Americam company to build ther armored personnel carriers in the US.Israel Weapons Industry which supplies various small arms systems to the Israeli military has opened a factory in Harrisburg,Pennsylvania.

I wouldn’t compare the population of Brooklyn and the Bronx to the population of Israel.
Israelis right and left pay a very high finacial price for this conflict as well as a high personal price.
Note I am not minimizing the price that the other side suffers.

And Davey, people who have taken tranquilizers can absolutely tie a knot and hang themselves.
Because of severe back pain as I am writing this I am taking both Valium and percoset (oxycodone and Tylenol) on the instruction of my physician. Both are narcotics and have a sedating affect as part of their profile.

This comment is so far off topic it’s not even in the galaxy. Read the comment rules & do NOT publish off topic comments. Keep them to the immediate subject of the post on which you’re commenting. Next time you do this I’ll delete the comment or put you in moderation.